SnapJag Creative Designs

Technology

As we are learning the new EC2 Amazon Cloud Services, I am compelled to post a “how to” when setting up and connecting to an AWS EC2 SQL Server box. This will answer many questions for others so they can get around the few issues that will creep up when Launching a new EC2 SQL instance. This same information can be used for other server launches too. Continue reading →

There is nothing better than knowing exactly what needs to be done to get the best results from your technology. Especially from a database server.

Why wouldn’t someone read the manual on how to care for a car to know how it works? Because everyone wants to have the satisfaction that they got in the car, ran it, and never had to look at the manual! Yet, you didn’t know you had to do maintenance, where that maintenance should take place and at what intervals. Well, this is where best practices come in. Don’t try and drive your car and let the engine churn without knowing how to best care for it.

This video presents the top 5 attributes and skills that make up a CIO or Chief Information Officer. There are many paths to take in the IT industry, and one of those it up. All the way up to CIO. You will say to yourself, “I can do that job, I know everything about computers”. Yet, when it comes to visionary, strategic, and financial implementations these are things you want to avoid. Then you might want to make some adjustments that either help you to be more involved and understand those more, or set your sights on something different.

This is a must see so you get a head on your fast track before time ticks away. Jason Hiner from TechRepublic provides a small clip that reviews these top challenges in this career path.

This past weekend I was out with my son in the mountains of Utah and found my phone battery ever so low. I just picked up a new G1 phone from Google at the T-Mobile store and have loved every minute of it. I used to have a Blackberry Pearl and will forever appreciate it’s simplicity, style, and dependability. I found that I had to make a very difficult decision and the thought that made the difference was that I use Gmail and Google Apps so much that I had always found it difficult to keep my Gmail contacts, schedule, and calendar up to date. The G1 was a clear choice at making this task easier. And after a few days, I haven’t regretted it once.

The battery does go out quite quickly when you find out how fun the G1 is. Therefore, I thought I should look for a way to keep my phone charged while out and about on my camping and four-wheeling trips. This tutorial is simple, straight forward, and was worth linking to in every way possible. I will build mine this week and let you know how it goes.

My wife bought the Blackberry Curve 8320 this weekend and is just loving it. She had the older model from four years ago; the one with the dial and back button on the right side, those buttons gave out. After four years, that’s awesome! … way to go RIM! You’re making an awesome product! We’re staying with you. Keep it up. Continue reading →

Well, here it goes again. It’s been almost seven months to the day since I performed my last blackberry upgrade. What a champ of a phone. I have dropped it numerous times, installed a few new apps, and have run it through the “data ringer”. I use it so much and have put it through so much that it’d be tough to go to another type of phone ever again! It’s great. Continue reading →

I have been trying to remove multiple emails on the Blackberry 8100 since I started using my first one and finally found a solution. I don’t like sitting for hours and removing hundreds of emails that can be examined later on my desktop. I want to get at what’s important at the moment and move on.

It wasn’t very obvious, but I did slap my forehead once I found it. I am so excited to have found this new method, I’m sure it’ll help you too.

If you don’t want to go through all the details of my tests below, that’s fine, the short of it is this … I got these messages out my stream by uninstalling everything on the desktop related to the blackberry and marking the selection for justInternet Email and leaving BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) alone.

What a chore it’s been to find software utilities that are low cost and do just the right things. That’s why I’m a developer. I like to build things to have the computer work for me. There is though a time in which it’s wise to let other developers to the work that isn’t your core competency. This is where Vector Graphics and graphics applications come in. I am a developer of front-end business applications for making ways to store, manipulate, and retrieve data for your business operations. Here are some graphics applications that have been great (not just vector graphics, but graphics applications in general)

Free

GIMP

Inkscape

VectorMagic (for tracing to Vector)

Pay

Lightroom (photo management)

PS (Photoshop CS)

Forthcoming will be some tutorials in using these to help you in your use of them. If you have any other graphics suggestions or tutorials, let me know and I’ll post them.